Calamity & Customer Service

Just after you review one roleplaying game about running a coffee shop with difficult customers designed to be run on its own or as corollary on top of just about any roleplaying game imaginable, along comes another roleplaying game about running a coffee shop with difficult customers designed to be run on its own or as corollary on top of just about any roleplaying game imaginable.* Coffee & Chaos – Comedy Café Roleplaying Game from Cobblepath Games was the first, a standalone game which used ordinary playing cards, cutlery mattered, and a slice of life was served up with smile and a heart in the foam in the face of difficult customers and dwindling resources (as essentially, there was never anyone to do the washing up!). The Eternal Grind Café is the second. It is published by Mottokrosh Machinations, best known for Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm, the Old School Renaissance adjacent roleplaying game of retro science fantasy inspired by the artwork of Frank Frazetta and Roger Dean, the adventures of John Carter of Mars, Buck Rogers, and Barbarella. Certainly, any of those ‘Hypertellurians’ could end up in the Eternal Grind Café, but then again so could any character from any roleplaying game. Definitely though, The Eternal Grind Café does not share the same inspirations as Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm.

* If I have to review a third, something weird is going on.

What has happened is that in their hubris, the Player Characters have angered the gods. To teach them a lesson, the gods have cast the Player Characters into Hell. Instead of hellfire and brimstone and eternal torment, it turns out that Hell is actually a minimum wage job in the only growing industry in the world. In other words, work as a barista. So now, where they were once mighty heroes and heroines who braved the odds to defeat dragons and save the princess, long-bearded wizards who commanded cosmic forces of magic, an accountant driven to investigate the unknown, and in the process save humanity unacknowledged, a necromancer who raised an army of the dead, and so on, they now clock on, tie an apron on, smile, take orders for coffee, brew that coffee, and smile again, until it is time to clock off. Unfortunately, the Eternal Grind Café gets at best, the most interesting customers, at worst, the worst customers in the known universe, and all the Player Characters have to do is suck it up until the end of their shift, or if they are really lucky, the gods change their minds. Which is unlucky. So technically, the Eternal Grind Café could actually be called the Infernal Grind Café...

The Eternal Grind Café is a storytelling style roleplaying game for between three and five players, which can be played in a single session. Mechanically, it is very simple, but it provides scope for lots of roleplaying and scope for improvisation. Designed for three to five players, as written, it is intended to be run by a Game Master, who portrays all of the customers who come to the Eternal Grind Café. However, it can easily be run without a Game Master, with the players taking it in turn to portray the bad or difficult customers. A barista in The Eternal Grind Café has two stats or skills. Barista covers anything to do with coffee and running the coffee shop, whilst Character covers everything else—and that includes everything that the barista could do as a Player Character in his home game. The hero’s wielding of a sword, the wizard opening up a portal to the netherworld, the accountant budgeting or casting Elder Sign when he really needs it, or the necromancer commanding the undead… Both skills start at three and are rolled on a six-sided die, the aim being to roll under. If good customer service is given, then both skills move to the right, but if bad customer service is given, they both move to the left. If the stats move to the right, the Barista skill goes up, but the Character skill goes down. If the stats move to the left, the Barista skill goes down, but the Character skill goes up. If either skill is raised to six in this fashion, the Barista loses his and the player loses control of his Barista, but in different ways depending on the stat. A Barista skill at six means that the barista has become a mindless drone, but a Character skill at six means that the barista goes on a murderous rage! Which is truly terrible customer service.

To prevent either from happening, the barista has an outlet—social media. If the player describes a social media post in which his barista complains about his job, he can reduce his Barista skill by one. If he describes a social media post in which he tells of a flashback about his Player Character’s epic deeds in his former life, he can reduce his Character skill by one. In this way, the Barista and Character skills go out of sync.

The aim of the baristas is to gain tips. Each tip is represented by a die type, from four-sided to twenty-sided dice. The bigger the die type, the bigger the tip.* Each die goes into the tip jar. At the end of the shift or whenever the health inspector turns up, all of the dice are rolled and totalled. For each full twenty points rolled, the gods relent, and let a barista return to his former life. If there are not enough points for every barista, then it is every barista for himself and since this hell, betrayal or doing the dirty is just going to be seen as part of the décor.

* The use of Dungeon Crawl Classics dice would be particularly diabolic!

To support play, the Game Master has tables for determining the belligerent nature of the coffee machine—it could be haunted or it could woof and wag its tail like a dog, for random events, and for twenty customers. They include Three Sloths in a Trench coat, Belon Trusk X, a barista’s Mother, Mango Maga Man, and more. Each one comes with roleplaying tips and what the baristas need to do for each to give a good tip. There is a sly sense of humour to the various customers. The Game Master is advised not to say who the customer is, but just describe what they look like and let the players work it out…

Physically, The Eternal Grind Café is lightly and cleanly presented. The artwork is light and suitably humorous. Elements of the presentation will change for the full edition rather than this the Preview Edition. Things that can be added to the game include coffee options, more complications, and more customers.

The Eternal Grind Café is a light and silly roleplaying game that is ever so easy to prepare and equally as easy to run. Perfect to run in between longer games or as a pick-up game, whether at a coffee shop or at home, The Eternal Grind Café is relaxing fun until everyone has the chance to get out of hell and never have to work another shift again!

Friday Fantasy: Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher

There are men and woman who study angels. There are men and women who study demons. What those angelogists and demonologists do not tell you is that they are not just the two sides of the same coin—they are the same coin. That is according to the Order of Mercyful Sepulcher. This sisterhood holds that angels and demons are members of the same race who come from a place called the Empyrean and that concepts such as heaven, hell, angels and demons are a flawed attempt to classify both Empyrean and the entities found there. Rather than fear or revere such angels and demons, the Order of Mercyful Sepulcher summons them, commands them, and uses their power. The nuns of the order, wrapped in their empowering Bad Habits and wreathed with a Halo, armed with Hallowed Hand Grenades and a M.A.C.E. (Masterful Armament for Crushing Enemies), and travelling in their T.O.M.B.S. (Tactical Ordinance Mobile Battle Shrine) travel the Ultracosm on the hunt for heresy, ready to burn it out. Or they too might be regarded as a heretical sect, harbouring blasphemous tomes and adhering to dissentive dictums, and practicing the activities of the apostate! It is all up to the Games Machinator as detailed in Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher.

Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher is a setting neutral supplement, a means to add battle nuns to her campaign, whether heretical or in search of heresy. Published by Mottokrosh Machinations, best known for Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm, the Old School Renaissance adjacent roleplaying game of retro science fantasy, Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher could easily be used in that setting to play up the occult aspects of the Games Machinator’s campaign, whether that involves one Player Character or a group of Player Characters from the order. Alternatively, the content of the supplement can be added to a fantasy roleplaying game to add occult and ‘grimdark’ elements, whether that is a Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, or a Zweihänder Grim & Perilous campaign. To that end, Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher includes stats and details for Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm and a guide to adapt it to Dungeons & Dragons, which means that its content can be used with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition.

Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher begins and ends as a toolkit for the Games Machinator and her players to create their own version of the order of battle nuns. The beginning consists of a list of tenets, goals, and enemies of the order, so that one iteration of the order is likely to be different from another. The end, the first of the supplement’s appendices, consists of descriptions of four members of an example order, the Gallas Coven. They include the Mother Superior, its veteran leader; a former ancient bronze war machine turned sister; a pilot from the future; and a loyal brute of a caretaker, the only male member of the quartet. These are written up with a concept, strengths and weaknesses, background, and secret to which the Games Machinator and her players need only develop stats and abilities. The other two of the three appendices in Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher consist of a decent bibliography and a good list of inspirational media, such as Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and Zardoz.

The bulk of Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher is dedicated to the tomes and rituals they contain, and the benefits that the sisterhood gain in performing them. For example, Merarrhythmisis Beatae, sometimes known as the ‘black scrolls’, contains the true names of angels and thus the means to tempt or coerce them into the mortal realm where the rituals can be performed in full. The description of the book includes an extract and several associated rumours, the latter useful should the Games Machinator want to work the book into her campaign. The major spell—being the equivalent of a Seventh, Eighth, or Ninth Level spell in Dungeons & Dragons—requires the participants, willing or unwilling, to be anointed with the true names of angels and can take several hours to cast. Once done, it grants an angelic power, such as ‘Perfect Pitch Singing’, ‘Feathered Wings’, or ‘Compel Good Deed’, as well as an angelic mutation, like ‘Cherubic’ (literally small, chubby, and naked), ‘Caustic’ saliva and sweat, or ‘Goat-Legged’. It can result in a complication such as permanent, uncontrolled, lasting, or traumatic. All of the ten tomes, including The Flaggellant’s Agrapha, Be thou alike Cadat, Ablations of the heavenly host, and Concerning the needle and other instruments are nicely detailed and full of flavour.

‘Reliquary—Tools of the Order’ details items mundane and marvelous both worn and used by the order. Bad Habits are the uniform of the order and grant abilities such as Corseted, which works as light armour or even Symbiotic, which is an entity in itself that provides the wearer strength and healing as long as the wearer follows the motivation of the symbiote. Weapons include ‘Hallowed Hand Grenade’, which has a variety of effect from drenching the target in a vile stench to imposing redemption on them and making them feel the weight of his sins and the aforementioned M.A.C.E., both blunt and flanged, and which requires a ceremony that marks the wielder out to any Empyrean being as being blessed with knowledge of them. The order’s most well-known device is the T.O.M.B.S., part war machine, part shrine, with no two exactly alike. It is accompanied by a full, two-page illustration.

Besides the trio of appendices, Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher is rounded with a pair of detailed adventure seeds. One involves the haunting of the Player Characters’ T.O.M.B.S., the other a nun whose aims verge on the heretical. Each comes with a list of possible scenes, treasures, and in the case of the first, opponents. Alongside these is a handful of shorter adventure seeds which will require more development.

Physically, Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher is decently presented and laid out. The artwork is cartoonish in style, matching the slightly tongue-in-cheek tone of the book.

Add battle nuns and their devout militancy to any campaign and it sends the campaign off into the realms of the camp as far as the border with the fetishist and the kinky. That much is at least acknowledged in the list of inspirational media for Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher and that means that its content is not going to be for everyone or every campaign. Yet there are elements in the supplement, the ten tomes in particular, which would be more than suitable for a grimdark campaign without necessarily dragging in the possibly prurient content elsewhere. This is not to say that the content is prurient, but by the time its reaches the table and players being players… A campaign or scenario involving Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher could become unnecessarily adult in tone for some players. Overall, there is a lot of roleplaying potential in playing battle nuns and using Solemn Scriptures of the Battle Nuns of the Mercyful Sepulcher, but it needs a group of players happy with its content and a Games Machinator ready for the jokes that are going to fly!

Cloak Crawl

Wizards are known for their eccentricity, none more so than Riblerim the Unsure, Master Diviner, for when he set out to create and build a theme park, it was not only wondrous and whimsical, but it was also actually constructed in an ultra-dimensional realm woven into his cloak. It consisted of several themed islands floating in a golden sky connected by a winding monoriver plied by cute animal-themed boats and Giant Flying Galapagos Turtles. It was both a private refuge and somewhere to receive guests, known to its creator as Riblerim’s Interesting Place, but then it became something else—a sanctuary! During the Great Needle Pusher Purge, all seamstresses and tailors, long suspected of sorcery, one and all, were persecuted and driven into exile, which of course, led to the Great Wearing of Nothing but Rags. That is, naturally, all forgotten now, but the question of what happened to all those fleeing needleworkers and clothcutters and more, remains one of much debate… What happened though, was that Riblerim the Unsure came to their aid. Refusing to watch the seamstresses and tailors be persecuted and driven out, he established ‘Costumiers with Latent Arcane Magicks Refuge Initiative & Motivation Scheme’—or CLAMRIMS, for short—and sought the exiled, freethinking clothiers and modistes, and offered them shelter in what had previously been wholly a sanctum for just himself and his guests. A sanctum that he drew about himself and thus carried with him everywhere he went. Then Riblerim the Unsure disappeared. That was fifty years ago…

In more recent times, Cambros, the sari-draped Warbot, has been seen wandering the land, wrapped in a great cloak, said to have belonged to his friend, Riblerim the Unsure. He wants to find his friend, whom he is sure can be found in the cloak. In return for the Player Characters’ aid, he offers adventure unlike any that they have been on before and great treasures to be found, and with his uttering of the Passcode, they are whisked into the cloak and the weird and wonderful world of Riblerim’s Interesting Place. They find themselves in the Welcominarium, an island complete with a wizard’s tower in classic style, a large orientation map marked with ‘You Are Here’ and an arrow, the Slips aYe Olde Gift Shop shaped like a wizard’s conical hat, and a dock on the monoriver, at which the animal themed boats—the horsey, the rocking pony, the seahorsey, the unpiggie, the pegaswan, and naturally, the teacup too, all sit ready to transport their passengers elsewhere. That elsewhere consists of several islands floating in the sky, around, above, and below the Player Characters. They include the feudal mini-kingdom of Avalon; the springiness of Bouncy Island, complete with white pellet rafting; the constant end of day Sunset Island; the benighted and lovelorn Adult Island; and the ostentatiously studious Island of Special Interests.

This is the set-up for Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park, a highly detailed, but systemless sandbox scenario whose sense of wonder and whimsy combine the classic funhouse style of dungeon with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It is published by Mottokrosh Machinations, following a successful Kickstarter campaign, a publisher best known for Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm, an Old School Renaissance adjacent roleplaying game of retro science fantasy. Numerous suggestions are given to get the Player Characters to and then inside the cloak—or rather into Riblerim’s Interesting Place. The default arrival point is the Welcominarium, but the Game Master is free to have them end up wherever seems the most appropriate, or fun. From there, the Player Characters are free to go wherever they want, or at least wherever the animal themed boats (or the teacup) will take—including up stream as well as down. Each island is a realm of its own, consisting of three or more adventure sites all following a particular theme. For example, Avalon is home to a fairy tale castle where tourneys and jousting are held to appease the self-appointed queen, Moronoe, nearly surrounded by dark forest lush with game and the domain of secretive druids. There is a seemingly endless cosplay closet at the dock where the Player Characters will alight, one which they can enter and select a suitable outfit for their time on the island. In comparison, Bouncy Island seems all but deserted, yet it does have its ruler, an Elfin figure whose cloak appears to mimic his moments and who can often be seen frolicking up and down the White Pellet Rafting route. Like many of the inhabitants, he knows many secrets of the Riblerim’s Interesting Place and might be persuaded to share one or more if the Player Characters are willing to brave the dangers of The Plastic Gauntlet—which like the rest of Bouncy Island, has definite springiness to it.

All of the adventure sites in Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park are nicely detailed—its interior spaces more so. These include both the floorplans for locations such as the Museum of Divination, as well as dungeons like the Tomb of the Last Knight and The Plastic Gauntlet. These are also neatly arranged so that the maps and map keys are opposite each other.

Mechanically, Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park is designed to be systemless. Or rather, written to be used with any roleplaying game, for it does actually have a system of its very own. This is the ‘HAWK’ structure, which stands for ‘Has’, ‘Acts’, ‘Wants’, and ‘Knows’, which is used to describe and define each of the major NPCs who appear in the scenario. The lack of numbers though, has its upsides and its downsides. Obviously, the Game Master can adapt Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park to the roleplaying game of her choice, whether that is 13th Age, the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, Hypertellurians, or Old School Essentials. All would work. The downside is that all together there are a lot of NPCs and monsters to provide stats for, but that is offset by how succinct the design of the individual islands is. The Player Characters are likely to be exploring one island at a time, so the Game Master need not necessarily adapt the whole of Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park in one go.

Given the nature of its setting and many of its inhabitants, it should be no surprise that most of the main treasures in Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park consist of cloaks, mantles, shawls, stoles, and the like. For example, the Dwarven War Cloak is made of thumb-sized iron bars which can interlock to form a personal fortification whilst the Concordant Cowl of Teeth, consisting of an array of molars, incisors, and canines strung together with silver chains, is simply an intimidating—and sometimes—an enraging sight. The other treasures to be found in Riblerim’s Interesting Place are much less detailed and generally simpler in nature, like the Ruby Opera Gloves, enchanted by vampires to make the wearer unnoticeable to humans or the carved soap, a heavy cake of rainbow tulip and hope-scented soap into which has been artfully scratched a trigonometrical formula. Decipher the formula and the Player Character casts Venusian magics with greater power. As with the rest of the content in Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park, none of these items have stats, but their simplicity makes them easy to adapt to the roleplaying game of the Game Master’s choice. Also included is a guide to making the studying and use of grimoires more interesting than mere spellbooks, which could also be adapted to the whatever rules the Game Master is using.

Physically, Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park is beautifully presented, done in retro-lush colours that add to the sense of unreality of Riblerim’s Interesting Place. The cartography is also excellent. If there is an issue with the presentation, it is that the layout is too tight and the text a little too small in places, making the book slightly difficult to read. There is advice though for both Game Master and players on how to handle the tone and some of the scenario’s content, which is clearly marked for each location and includes spiders, demonic summonings—under mostly safe conditions, cannibalism, and more. This is through the use of lines and veils, and the X-card, although the self-contained nature of the scenario’s varying islands do help to separate this more adult content.

As a sandcrawl, Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park differs in that its individual locations, its islands floating on the fabric of Riblerim’s cloak, are discrete and there is relatively little to connect them narratively. This is because this is not really a sandcrawl with factions and the power and influence of its NPCs do not extend beyond the confines of their respective islands. Here perhaps some advice or a table listing what each of the NPCs want and how those wants crossover could have been useful. However, there are threads which run right across the theme park that is Riblerim’s Interesting Place. In particular, a lot of the NPCs that the Player Characters will encounter are the equivalent of staff or actors. They look the part, and they play the part, but their lack of competence in comparison to the Player Characters adds to the sense of unreality of the already strange realm. Similarly, the fact that Riblerim’s Interesting Place has its own currency—Aesopian Rupees—exchanged for whispered secrets, also adds to the unreality as well as driving the players to come up with increasingly interesting confessions for their characters to pay for anything!

With Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park, Mottokrosh Machinations does that ‘thing within a thing, within a…’ just as it did with Brutal Imperilment in the Bag of Infinite Holding. However, rather than being constrained by being in a bag upon a bag upon a bag, there is an openness to Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park. The whole of its robed realm is presented to the Player Characters, and they are free to visit any one of its discrete, individual islands however they want, encountering something different on each one, whether that is a genre, a theme, or a tone—or a combination of all three. Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park is sumptuously strange, ornately odd, and richly ridiculous, a campaign within campaign, a robed resort of wonders and whimsy.

Friday Fantasy: Brutal Imperilment in the Bag of Infinite Holding

Brutal Imperilment in the Bag of Infinite Holding is a short and clever, if slightly silly scenario for the fantasy roleplaying game of your choice. Published by Mottokrosh Machinations, it is nominally written for use with Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm, but in terms of mechanics, it is all but systemless. Certainly, it would work with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and any number of Old School Renaissance retroclones or roleplaying games which involve high magic. The set-up is very simple. The Queen has lost her prized possessions—the crown jewels and her beloved poodle, Duchess—and she charges the Player Characters with their retrieval. She may even accompany them! That sounds simple enough, but nothing about this situation is so, for the Queen happened to lose both of them into her magical Bag of Infinite Holding!

Players and Dungeon Masters of a certain age will remember a certain adventure from Imagine Issue Number 15 (June, 1984)—‘Round the Bend’, in which the player characters, all Half-Orcs in the employ of a wizard, are shrunk down into miniaturised size and sent down the drain in order to retrieve various items on his behalf. Brutal Imperilment in the Bag of Infinite Holding is not dissimilar in that in climbing into the bag of holding, the player characters are shrunk down in size. What they discover is that the reason it is a Bag of Infinite Holding is because one Bag of Holding has been put inside another Bag of Holding or lost in another Bag of Holding, and then again—and then again. Thus once shrunk, the player characters find themselves inside a Bag of Holding big enough to be room connected to a series of Bags of Holding, each also the size of room. What you have then with Brutal Imperilment in the Bag of Infinite Holding is a dungeon, but not just any dungeon. Rather a dungeon made up of bags containing a completely random assortment of things, persons, monsters, traps, treasures, and more. As long as it could end up in a bag, or rather a Bag of Infinite Holding, it can end up being in this ‘dungeon’.

Barring the first three bags—or rooms—none of the actual locations in Brutal Imperilment in the Bag of Infinite Holding is described, although they are mapped. Even as mapped, they are simply a series of connected boxes, each box representing a bag or room across three levels—the Early Bags, The Weird Middle Belt, and The Far Depths. It also suggests how the Game Master can set up and map the adventure herself to create a different layout. Primarily though, what the Game Master will be doing is populating the dungeon herself and to do this, the scenario provides tables of random room or bag descriptions, for the Early Bags, The Weird Middle Belt, and The Far Depths. These are backed up with a Random Finds table in the first appendix.

What this set-up means is that Brutal Imperilment in the Bag of Infinite Holding could be run with a minimum of preparation—indeed barely any preparation at all. Especially if she has a handy book of ready-to-run monsters just in case the player characters run into them. As to particular system, only is Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm is referenced, but no stats are given, for either the NPCs and monsters or the pre-generated player characters given in the second appendix. They include a fop, a Dwarven weremole spymaster, a merfolk skeleton necromancer, an avaricious purple octopus wearing a diving helmet, the queen’s highly sceptical maid, a Dark Elf cleric, and the Queen herself. None have any stats or skills, but all have strengths and weaknesses, a drive, a secret, and some gear, such that the Game Master could easily create them using the system of her choice. Or alternatively, the players could simply roleplay them as written and roll dice as necessary.

Of course, a Bag of Infinite Holding is a very Dungeons & Dragons thing, but the set-up need not involve that signature magical item at all. The third appendix suggests various alternatives, such as Fae Door Portals and Wells, even gives one or two ideas as to how the adventure could be used in different ways. The book also includes notes on roleplaying the various inhabitants of the labyrinth of bags as well as possible epilogues, including one suggestion that the complex of Bag of Holding upon Bag of Holding is actually not unlike a certain Christopher Nolan film. 

Physically, Brutal Imperilment in the Bag of Infinite Holding is a slim book. Whether cartoony or realistic, the illustrations are excellent, and the writing decent, if perhaps succinct. Overall, the adventure should provide a session or two’s worth of slightly silly, tongue-in-cheek fantasy roleplay, with very low preparation time. If you wanted to adventure to find out what is at the bottom of the bag, then Brutal Imperilment in the Bag of Infinite Holding lets you fall in and go beyond its limits.

Vamped Up Science Fantasy

Heart of Atom Isa: A Short System Neutral Adventure in a Science Fantasy Future of Old is a scenario for Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm, the roleplaying game of retro-Science Fantasy inspired by the artwork of Frank Frazetta and Roger Dean, the adventures of John Carter of Mars, Buck Rogers, and Barbarella published by Mottokrosh Machinations. Unlike the previous A Bride for a Vampire, which was a blend of the Gothic horror with the Science Fantasy, Heart of Atom Isa is very much grounded in classic Science Fantasy. It mixes Planetary Romance with a B-Movie supervillainess worthy of the Pulps of the twenties and thirties.

Although Heart of Atom Isa is written with Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm in mind, it is all but systemless, and so like A Bride for a Vampire, it can be adapted to almost any set of mechanics. This extends to the four given pre-generated Hypertellurians, who come with strengths and weaknesses, plus a drive, all ready for the Game Master to adapt to the roleplaying of her choice. Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm is of course, an Old School Renaissance Science Fantasy retroclone, so there are plenty of other retroclones which Heart of Atom Isa could be adapted to, but then again, it would equally work as well with Evil Hat Productions’ FATE Core. The given pre-generated player characters include a Victorian-era Ultranaut adventuress, a fez-wearing formless alien green blob fascinated by magic, a greedy ex-Pharoah, and a beetle-man general cut off from his Hive. The playing group is free to adapt these or use the the versions provided by the publisher.

As written, Heart of Atom Isa is designed to be played by four players in just one or two sessions. The scenario is thus relatively short, consisting of three scenes, but with plenty of scope for player input. The player characters are ultracosmic explorers, discovering the wonders of the multiverse aboard their silver bullet rocket, the Atom Isa. Unfortunately, when visiting the desert world of Sonnos, the ‘heart’ of the Atom Isa is stolen. It can still travel through space, but not with any sense of finesse, but it can no longer traverse across or through the Ultracosm. The culprit is Argencia, the feared Silver Sorceress known to crush men. As the scenario begins, they have discovered where the archvillainess lives—or hides depending upon your point of view—and that is amongst the nomadic tribe of Zelteens, who live and travel on gargantuan hermit crab-like beings, known as Tremendostaceans.

In the first part of the scenario get to visit the Zeldeens amongst their walking village of connected Tremendostaceans with their tremendous conical shells upon which stand the Zeldeens’ houses and connecting bridges, and visit one of their famous markets where traders from all over the Ultracomos come to deal. This can be in anything from strange paints (Dulux is not going to be offering these paints any time soon) offered by Magnus the Paint Seller and explorer’s gear from Taque’s Emporium for Explorers & Fortune Hunters such as a breathing bowl helmet to Lomarc’s Fashionistas of Tomorrow at which can be found figure hugging, shrink-to-fit Helix second skin onesies and Extra Teeth and Nanny Nontyvia’s Reclaimed Relics where you can find Relic-shards of the A.I. saints. Add in a table of random events, whatever the player characters want to do, and the opportunity to do some shopping, should provide plenty of opportunity for some fun gaming and roleplaying.

The second part sees the crew of the Atom Isa chase Argencia off Sonnos to her secret lair on a distant, icy moon. (Of course it has to be an icy moon, the player characters have been on a desert planet!) Naturally—or rather unnaturally (which is perfectly natural when you are dealing with a feared archvillainess like Argencia)—Argencia’s lair is just a little bit weird and a whole lot creepy, including keeping a harem of physically fit and attractive men and women for pleasure and decoration because, well because… In addition, Argencia has actual minions at her command, so if the player characters want a fight, then they will give it to them. Conversely, Argencia herself is intended to be sexy and slinky, preferring to use her charisma, bargains, and seduction to get what she wants. Or get away with what she wants. Ideally, she should give the Game Master plenty to get into in terms of roleplaying, but the sex appeal of the character may not be to be the taste of every playing group. Now Argencia is designed as a B-Movie, Pulp villain, and so this does fit the archetype, but the Game Master needs to be aware of this prior to play and may want to take her players’ sensibilities into account. Of course, like any good Pulp villain, there is a means for her to make her escape and be ready to make a comeback in a future scenario.

Physically, Heart of Atom Isa is a slim,digest-sized book. Done in full colour throughout, the artwork has a pleasing cartoonishly pulp look to it. In particular, the thumbnail portraits of the pre-generated player characters are really good. The adventure is mostly presented in an almost bullet point style, making it easy to pick up off the page.

Heart of Atom Isa is really easy to pick up and run and easy to adapt to the roleplaying game mechanics of the Game Master’s choice. A minimum of preparation is required and the Game Master could easily run Heart of Atom Isa as a completely systemless adventure with even less preparation. Whether running as a one-shot or as part of an Ultracosmic Saturday morning style serial, Heart of Atom Isa: A Short System Neutral Adventure in a Science Fantasy Future of Old is a tongue-in-cheek, pulpy, fun scenario.

Six Brides for a Vampire

A Bride for Dracula: A System neutral, one-shot adventure of bridal contests with bite. is one-shot camp gothic scenario from Mottokrosh Machinations, a publisher best known for Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm. Indeed, Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm is one for the systems for which A Bride for Dracula is written, although technically, and as its subtitle suggests, the scenario is entirely systemless and its plot and set-up could be run using a panoply of roleplaying games and systems—and genres! For A Bride of Dracula takes place in a time when Dracula still resides at his castle in Transylvania, his greatest victim still loves him, the Nazis lost World War II, and ‘brain in a jar’ technology is available. So there is a technological seam to the scenario alongside its gothic theming, much in keeping with its genre.

A Bride for Dracula takes place on one night at an event hosted by Count Dracula who seeks—or rather lusts after—a new wife. Thus six prospective brides—and thus six players—have come to his castle at his invitation, their suitability to be his wife to be tested. They include Princess Naomi Andress of the Pale Hills—the prospective bride and her mother, Queen Ursula Andress of the Pale Hills; Brigitte, a humble milk maid; Elsa Van Elseling (definitely not Van Helsing Senior’s daughter. Nope.); and the crimson-skinned Yvonna Fackelot, who comes with minions and an almost endless wardrobe. They are joined by John the Carriage Driver, who is just along for the ride. All six characters come with secrets, goals, fears, and a list of the things they are good at and bad at. As written, these characters are detailed enough for players to roleplay should the Game Master want to run A Bride for Dracula as a very rules light, almost freeform scenario.

Alternatively, the players could roleplay members of the entourage for one of the contestants in Dracula’s  bridal competition. The Game Master and the players can easily adapt A Bride for Dracula to the mechanics of their choice. It would work with just about any retroclone for the Old School Renaissance, but especially with the tone of Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay, but also Troika, Into the Odd, or Numenera for example. Given that there are no stats given for any of the characters, it does mean that the Game Master will have some extra preparation to undertake prior to running the scenario. Plus, it is a pity that no stats are given for the characters written for the publisher’s own Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm.

Plotwise, A Bride for Dracula is straightforward and linear. The characters start the game together and will experience the same encounters together before play opens up when the contest begins. The Game Master gets to throw in some complications too and much of the fun of the scenario will come as the players and their characters react to these complications and try to out-compete each other in Dracula’s contests. There is certainly enough to keep a playing group of six players occupied for the evening or session.

Physically, A Bride for Dracula is short book, neat and tidy. It is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is decent. The writing is clear and really, the Game Master could grab A Bride for Dracula as is and prepare it in ten minutes. So it really works as a pick-up game when not every player can make a regular session.

Unfortunately, there are couple of elements to A Bride for Dracula which may be problematic. One is the tone, which is camp and gothic, much in the style of the Carry on films—most obviously Carry on Screaming!—and the Hammer Horror series of films, and that tongue in cheek tone, even silliness, is not to everyone’s taste. The other issue is that one of the player characters is an ex-Nazi. Now the scenario does not dwell overly on this or go into further detail, but it does fit in with the campy, gothic tone of the scenario and the exploitation genre of films which inspired the scenario. As is, the character will need to be played with some care, but her very nature means that some players will find her inclusion offensive and not only will they not play her, they may not play the scenario because she is included. The Game Master will need to judge her players as to whether or not to include her, and if not, create a replacement. Arguably, it is a pity that the designer did not include an alternative.

A group need not even have a copy of A Bride for Dracula to play it, since the scenario is available online. Unless the Game Master and her group need to create characters, preparation for A Bride for Dracula is really, really quick, making it perfect to pull out and run at the last minute. There is scope for the Game Master to tinker with it at her heart’s content, but at the heart of A Bride for Dracula: A System neutral, one-shot adventure of bridal contests with bite. is a no fuss, straightforward, even linear scenario which can be run with the minimum of preparation.

Fabulating from Beyond the Old School Renaissance

Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm is a roleplaying game of retro-Science Fantasy inspired by the artwork of Frank Frazetta and Roger Dean, the adventures of John Carter of Mars and Buck Rogers, and Barbarella. Published by Mottokrosh Machinations, it casts Aliens, Beasts, Constructs, Revenants, Royalty, and Ultranauts into the the past of an extreme far future and has them explore the fantastic and discover the wonders of an age unimagined. This is a future in which it is all but impossible to tell the difference between science and sorcery, between technology and magical artefacts, a future in which adventures can take place any when and anywhere. Mechanically, it has been inspired by a range of roleplaying games from Dungeons & Dragons and Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game to The Black Hack and Forbidden Lands – Raiders & Rogues in a Cursed World, but the roleplaying game it feels closest to is Numenera, but the retro-future of Hypertellurians is weirder, more wondrous, and is more Swords & Sandals meets Ray-punk than the Ninth Age of Numenera.

A character in Hypertellurians is defined by three abilities—Brawn, Agility, and Mind. He will have Affinities and Buffers in one or more of these as well as a Defence value and a Drive and a Weakness. He will also have an archetype and a concept from that archetype, and they together will determine the character’s initial major and minor powers. There are six Archetypes—Aliens, Beasts, Constructs, Revenants, Royalty, and Ultranauts—each of which gives three Concepts. For example, under Beast, the three concepts are Shapeshifter, Gnoll Madam, and Learned Centaur. Each given Concept sets a character’s abilities, Affinity, Drive, Weakness, Advances—what Cosm powers a character starts with, and Equipment.

Every Hypertellurian starts two major and three minor cosm powers. For example, the starting powers for the Alien archetype are ‘Level Playing Field’, by which the Hypertellurian can raise and lower natural features—this requires a Mind check and costs the Hypertellurian one or more Mind points in damage, and ‘Phase’, by which the Hypertellurian can pass through solid objects. Again, this will cost him Mind points in damage. An Alien with the Aquatic Creature Concept will have ‘Bioluminescent’, ‘Deep Lungs’, and ‘Well Adjusted’, whereas a Royal with the Genie Without a Lamp Concept would have the powers ‘Different Down There’, ‘Spoken Like You Mean It’, and ‘Vox Furore Dei’, as well as the archetype powers of ‘Grace’ and ‘Rallying Speech’. As a Hypertellurian adventures and explores the Ultracosm, he may gain experience and learn or develop further cosm powers. These can come from within his own archetype or they can be taken from a general selection.

One issue here not really explored or supported in any depth is that of a player creating a Hypertellurian of his own design. The danger here is that any design could be too powerful or too weak, and perhaps a future supplement might address this as well as provide wider options in terms of possible starting powers and cosm powers.

Character creation in Hypertellurians is foremost a case of choosing Archetype and a Concept. A player is free to take the given options—Drive, Weakness, Advances, and so on, or choose more freely. Similarly, he can note down the values for his character’s abilities or he can roll for them or assign points. Alternatively, a player can devise a character from scratch, including Archetype, Concept, and so on, working out the details with the Game Master.

Captain Larissa Tosca
Pilot, Soviet Air Forces
Brawn 9 (-1), Agility 11 (+1) (Affinity 1), Mind 12 (+2)
Defence: 11
Drive: Justice
Weakness: Must always be the hero
Powers: Favoured, Know Things; Beloved, Ray Emitter, Wonders Never Cease
Equipment: Power of the People Beam Emitter, alms for the poor and innocent (who have suffered at the hands of capitalists), temperature controlled space suit, nozzled container of pressurised and condensed vapor, mini-skirt, picture of her family, picture of Lenin.

Mechanically, Hypertellurians is again fairly simple and designed for fast, character focused gaming. When a character wants to act, his player rolls a twenty-sided die, applies a bonus from an appropriate ability, and attempts to beat a given Target Number. This is set by the Game Master, but in combat is equal to the defender’s Defence value. It also uses the Advantage and Disadvantage mechanic of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and The Black Hack. Combat is slightly more complex in that characters have a choice of taking a Fast Turn or a Regular Turn. Actions within those turns include making an attack, moving, disengaging, performing a special manoeuvre, using a power, and so on, but if a character takes a Fast Turn, he only gets one action, but goes first, whereas if he takes a Regular Turn, he can take two actions, but acts after anyone who was going to, has taken a Fast Turn.

Combat allows damage to be transferred from mook to mook to allow player characters to take out hordes. Damage is inflicted directly on a character’s abilities, first Brawn, then Agility, and lastly Mind, although social or psychic damage might inflict damage on Mind directly. Damage can be reduced by armour, an affinity with a particular ability, a buffer, a power, and so on. When an ability is reduced to zero, then a Hypertellurian suffers trauma and the player rolls on the appropriate table—the Physical Trauma table for damage suffered by the Brawn or Agility abilities, the Mental Trauma table for damage suffered by the Mind ability.

Characters in Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm are meant to be dynamic, if not heroic, and that means unencumbered. Instead of his carrying around numerous bags and pouches—a task best left to servants, pak-yaks, and the like—a Hypertellurian can only comfortably carry a number of items about or on his person. Mechanically, this is equal to his Brawn and represented by a number of slots, and some items take up more than a single slot. So a light force shield which is projected from a ruby gem on a wrist bracer would take up a single slot, whilst a spiked maul would take up three slots. The encumbrance mechanics are simple, but have a couple of nuances. One is that heavy armour and heavy weapons are exhausting to use and cost Brawn to employ, so there is an emphasis away from lumbering slug-fests in combat in Hypertellurians. The other is that spellbooks—which anyone in Hypertellurians can read and cast from—also fill a single slot, but since magic is esoteric and complex, a spellbook only holds one spell. Some spells are given in Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm, but a Game Master can easily plunder any other fantasy or Old School Renaissance roleplaying game and its supplements for more spells and equally, more magical artefacts. That said, spellbooks capable of holding more than a single spell are sought after in the Ultracosm.

At the heart of Hypertellurians is wonder—that of the Ultracosm, its awe-spiring places, creatures, and vistas—and Wonder. When the Hypertellurians encounter the amazing, the fantastic, the phantasmagorical, the Game Master hands out points of Wonder, roughly ten per session. This goes into a communal pool from which every player can spend for various effects. In combat, this can be to inflict a Brutal Blow, make a Called Shot, Charge, or Sprint. Typically, such use of Wonder in combat will trump the actions of others, its use being a Fast Action. Out of combat, this can be to suddenly Manifest Memory, reaching through the Ultracosm to manifest a relevant, experienced memory to gain a wildly beneficial effect; draw upon the Ultracosm to make a Marvelous Adaptation and become an expert in a skill or topic for a scene; Push Fate and gain a reroll on an action, though the Ultracosm will add a complication to the Hypertellurian’s future; or Recall Memory to gain a roll with advantage.

In addition to tracking Wonder going into the communal pool, the Game Master also tracks how much is spent. For every ten spent, every player character can take an advance. These can be to increase an ability, gain affinity or a buffer with an ability, or gain a new Archetype or Cosm power. Advances are either minor, medium, or major, and over the course of one hundred gained and spent Wonder, a Hypertellurian will gain six minor, three medium, and one major advance. Overall, this handles experience and experience in a simple, communal fashion.

Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm with solid advice for both players and the Game Master. For the former, this includes making sure that your character supports the tone and setting of the Ultracosm, supporting concepts of your fellow players, enjoying failure, playing beyond the character sheet, and so on. For the Game Master, it is to support the players and their characters, to say yes, to reveal rather than keep the scenario hidden, be informative, take pleasure in the game play, and so on. It is thoroughly good advice, pertinent to most roleplaying games, not just Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm, and yet…

Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm feels underwritten in a number of places. Mechanically, for example, how does Manifest Memory work in play. There is no example, so the Game Master will have to adjudicate or decide. Although sample NPCs, monsters, and magical items are included, and there is a list of inspirations in the roleplaying game’s own Appendix N, there is the question of what exactly the Ultracosm is and what it looks like. There is also the visual inspiration of the author’s Pinterest page and the roleplaying does include a table of reasons why a diverse range of characters such as the player characters are together, but some more advice and help would have been useful, because as much as some Game Masters are going to find the freedom of the Ultarcosm exhilarating, others may well be daunted by it. Much of the problem stems from the emphasis upon creating characters in Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm.

One way in which to see Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm is the fantastic of Dungeons & Dragons and the Old School Renaissance pushed a million years into the future or into the length and width of a cosm parallel to those fantasies. Indeed, the roleplaying game gives advice on adapting the characters to such worlds—every ten Wonder spent being the equivalent to one character Level in Dungeons & Dragons—and converting monsters and NPCs, and so forth. Thus the Game Master could take her Hypertellurians campaign up and down and across the Ultracosm, having her player characters visit or play through various scenarios Dungeons & Dragons and the Old School Renaissance (and other roleplaying games). Ideally, these should be weird, arch, or arcane, obvious publishers whose scenarios would probably fit include Lamentations of the Flame Princes and Hydra Collective LLC, but there are plenty of others from numerous different publishers. 

Another issue is the lack of a scenario in Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm, if only to see what a Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm scenario looks like. Again, this comes back to some Game Masters are going to find the freedom of the Ultarcosm exhilarating, but others may well be daunted by it. To some extent, this can be offset by the Game Master looking for scenario herself, perhaps from those publishers listed above, but it would have been both useful and interesting to see what the author had in mind.

Physically, Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm is a relatively slim tome, illustrated throughout with period artwork. There is a certain lurid oppressiveness to its look, but the artwork is never less than fantastic and inspirational.

Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm is not an Old School Renaissance roleplaying game in the sense that it does not directly draw from Dungeons & Dragons and its advice for the Game Master is definitely contemporary. That said, its roots do lie in Dungeons & Dragons and the Old School Renaissance and it is able to plug back into it as much as it and the Ultracosm stands outside of it. Indeed, Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm is a fantastic way to revisit the fantasy of Dungeons & Dragons as well as other genres from an entirely different place.